Immigrant Integration: Educator Resource Guide

Recommends ways for district administrators, school administrators, and teachers to promote immigrant integration in schools in critical areas, including school enrollment, classroom instruction, student assessment, and family and community outreach

Opening New Doors: Hands-On Participation Brings A New Audience to the Clay Studio

This case study examines how The Clay Studio, a ceramic-arts studio, gallery and shop in Philadelphia, attracted younger audiences to its workshops and exhibits. In 2007, the studio became concerned that its audience was getting older and few newcomers were signing up for classes or making purchases. The studio then sought to engage younger professionals ages 25 to 45. Audience research helped identify elements of activities that could attract younger professionals, including flexible schedules, shorter courses and the ability to socialize. The studio therefore added new experiences such as "Date Night," a Friday evening event where novices could experiment with clay in an informal environment. It also redesigned its website and print materials to emphasize the visitor experience rather than the skills participants might learn.Five years later, the number of students taking classes tripled and revenue from the school more than doubled. Monthly workshops regularly sell out, and many newcomers have gone on to take longer classes.But challenges remain. The organization must now balance the needs and desires of long-time students and collectors, who want to see the more serious side of Clay, with those of the newcomers, many of whom prefer a more social, informal experience.This publication is part of a set of case studies and reports looking at the efforts of arts organizations that received Wallace Excellence Awards to reach new audiences and deepen relationships with current ones. In three accompanying videos, Clay Studio president Chris Taylor and Magda Martinez, the program director of Fleisher Art Memorial, another Philadelphia arts organization that received a Wallace Excellence Award, discuss their audience-building efforts

Extending Reach with Technology: Seattle Opera's Multipronged Experiment to Deepen Relationships and Reach New Audiences

This case study describes the Seattle Opera's four-year-long effort to test which kinds of technology channels work well in audience engagement. Its experiments with technology included a simulcast of Madama Butterfly at an 8,300-capacity sports arena, interactive kiosks in the opera house lobby and online videos that took viewers behind the scenes of the opera's signature production of Wagner's Ring cycle. Every season employed at least some winning engagement tools, driven in large part by the company's efforts to gather information before determining what applications to use. Although the majority of the tools were most effective at enhancing the experience of patrons who already had a deep connection with the company, the simulcast, in project's fourth year, also brought in opera newcomers. One important lesson from the work was that effective strategies required the involvement not just of the marketing department, but of the entire organization, including its union representatives

The Art of Community: Creativity at the Crossroads of Immigrant Cultures and Social Services

These are case studies that give credance to the belief that respect for one's own artistic traditions is critical to the acculturation process. The essays contained here offer clear and shining examples of how paying attention to culture and creativity can build self-confidence, nurture a productive and valuable citizenry, and even save a life. Through these stories, we begin to see that encouraging the practice of cultural traditions and participation in arts activities will help newcomers spread their wings and fly

Fostering Public Good Contributions with Symbolic Awards: A Large-Scale Natural Field Experiment at Wikipedia

This natural field experiment tests the effects of purely symbolic awards on volunteer retention in a public goods context. The experiment is conducted at Wikipedia, which faces declining editor retention rates, particularly among newcomers. Randomization assures that award receipt is orthogonal to previous performance. The analysis reveals that awards have a sizeable effect on newcomer retention, which persists over the four quarters following the initial intervention. This is noteworthy for indicating that awards for volunteers can be effective even if they have no impact on the volunteers’ future career opportunities. The awards are purely symbolic, and the status increment they produce is limited to the recipients’ pseudonymous online identities in a community they have just recently joined. The results can be explained by enhanced self-identification with the community, but they are also in line with recent findings on the role of status and reputation, recognition, and evaluation potential in online communities. Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016.2540 . This paper was accepted by John List, behavioral economics

2003-2004 Statewide Survey of Immigrants and Refugees

This report weaves together demographic and field research conducted by ICIRR in 2003 to assess the needs of immigrants and refugees throughout Illinois and to recommend the formation of an Illinois immigrant integration policy

Innovation Lab For Museums: Case Studies in Innovation and Adaptive Capacity

This case study on Latino New South follows the journey and partnerships of three cultural institutions -- the Levine Museum of the New South (Charlotte, NC), the Atlanta History Center (Atlanta, GA), and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Birmingham, AL). These three organizations entered the Innovation Lab for Museums with the intention of making their programs and institutions more resonant with, and responsive to, the fast-growing Latino communities in their respective cities

Bridging the Gap: Training Needs Assessment of the Immigrant Workforce in Onondaga County, NY

[Excerpt] This report addresses one small facet of the skills dilemma facing Onondaga County; that is, can the growing immigrant/refugee population in Syracuse satisfy local employers’ demand for labor? With support from a grant provided by the Economic Development Administration (U.S. Department of Commerce) University Center at Cornell University, members of the ILR School’s Extension faculty interviewed employers,immigrants and other English-as-a-secondlanguage (ESL) workforce newcomers, service providers, labor unions, and government planners during the winter of 2007 to assess the training needs of the county’s immigrant and ESL workforce. Our research was facilitated and aided by the Onondaga County Office of Economic Development